Mainly for testing the poll feature of the new forum, here's a little poll of whether we should keep some familiar forum features, such as the user ratings.

The forum update has reset all user ratings, and I see from my forum logs that already three users (I won't tell the names here ) are very busy going together through the forums and rating the other users down, after having rated themselves up. I'd like to take this occasion to get rid of the user rating for good - at least this would save our three buddies a lot of time and effort.

If you want please take a minute to fill in the poll. You can also post suggestions about other forum features here.

Shall we keep user ratings? single choice
yes	33%, 31 Votes
no	67%, 63 Votes
Total Votes: 94 Voting on this poll ends: 0 seconds ago

Oh, and on that occasion: Forum admins can now read PMs, so if you want to talk with your buddies about something that I should not know, better don't use PMs.

I think this is a good idea to remove ratings. Besides that I believe that the rating of a topic should also be removed. Often ratings are not objective or made out of pure fun.

PS: I just rated this topic 5 stars to show you what I mean.

I voted no

The fonts of the ubb_dark stylesheet are way too small. It is not possible to read the text on a 22' monitor without increasing the font sizes in the browser.

I voted no. I'm suspecting one user to be one of the three downrating users and I looked to his rating and I was right. That explains why my rating is that bad. Ratings are senseless anyway.

I gave you (Joozey) 5 stars for this good reply.

But I hope you see the problem here. This time I give him 5 and maybe tomorrow I disagree with him in another topic. Then I am doomed and have to live with it. I cannot rate him every day. And so this is a strange tool.

Let us watch at another scenario:
Maybe I don't like another person and I rate him one star. I could also have told him something insulting then. So rating can be a somewhat hidden way to insult other people. But this is forbidden if you read the forum rules.

I rated a few of my friends 5 stars today. But is this an objective image for the majority of people here? No, I made it out of pure fun but this shows you exactly how useless this tool is.

I think this kind of behaviour itself is a problem; rating someone down because you disagree with him/her. I think that about 60% of my posts are helping others, but I only had 3 stars because I voiced my opinion in some of the more controversial topics here on the forum. Polite debate shouldn't be discouraged I think.

I voted no.

I think it would be a good idea to finally get rid of user ratings.
We should learn the lessons of the past when users were rated down heavily in discussions only because of their opinions.
Also prejudices can arise from the number of stars a user has.

Ah, do we have here the first of the 3 guys? Then I guess I also know the second...

I think the rating feature is childish and not suited for a software forum.